Tag: Power

Satire needs to have a cutting point. It needs intention, and in this film, the intention was unclear. That being said, we identified scenes interspersed throughout when Lee used form to make statements about power. When the men sneak into the armory to unlock the chastity belts, Old Duke decides to challenge Lysistrata. He insults her, asking the women “to be polite… bow down to the man.” Rather than give in, Lysistrata attacks the men’s masculinity. The sound design of the scene is important: we hear her heels but not his footsteps. When she smacks Old Duke, all of the men seem physically affected when their heads flinch. This is an exceptional scene from the film, and by that we mean both powerful, and an exception. We found Chi-Raq’s ending to be too digestible, and out of touch with reality. The film isn’t grounded in reality, but we are.

Throughout the film, we see women of color use their sexuality as a weapon.

The appearance of the “gun” in Chi-Raq is more than just an object but a central character to the film’s politics of power. The arc of the “gun” begins with it’s birth and ends with it’s death. As part of the film’s introduction, audience members view a map of the United States of America constructed by different types of guns; this suggests the “birth” of the gun’s story line, the power it will hold for the film, and foreshadows the violence of not only Chicago, but all of the United States. In Father Mike’s sermon, he states “the gun began [a] professional career,” suggesting its sentience and potential to grow. However, we see the downfall of Gun and his “colleagues” at the very end of the film, a pile of guns sitting on display as the community reaches peace, reminiscent of a mass grave of corpses.

Inside Man is teeming with interracial racial stereotypes. Unlike some of the other films by Spike Lee, some of the discriminatory statements are very outright and evident. For example, the cop sees Vikram’s turban and shouts “Aw shit, a fucking Arab”, while the hostage claims, “No, I’m a Sikh.” The scene is accompanied by non-diegetic sounds of police officers shouting, “what is that? Is that a bomb?”

In another instant, Detective Frazer talks to Sergeant Collins, Collins says, “This one little spick is getting his clock cleaned by another one.” Frazer calls Collins out and responds, “just do me a favor sergeant and tone down the color commentary”, to which Collins responds with “the nnn— African American kid…”

In Bamboozled, animation is a tool that investigates who has ownership over media and art that people consume and where power rests. Animation allows the director to construct a reality that he or she has full influence over. Whether it is the color composition, mise en scène, and movement everything is strategically placed, relegating the control to the creator. The scene at 1:56:20, the Mau Maus create the graphic image on their site with every element on the screen being of salience. Continue reading “Animation and Power”

Oscar Micheaux is credited as the first African American film director. He was part of a movement in film, which was called ‘race films’, a somewhat condescending and reducing title for an ambitious and formidable school of film. Micheaux’s films stand alone as race films that actually dealt with issues of race and in … Continue reading →

We’ve all heard this phrase used in earnest before. It’s supposed to downplay or excuse something racist said by a white person by demonstrating their personal affinity for black people. It is meaningless and an extension of the racism expressed in their previous statement that they are now trying to cover up with the excuse … Continue reading →

Spike Lee has a firm place in the debate of the obligation of the black artist. Lee sits as an unwavering force in this discussion because he is a black artist making art about black people for black people at an unprecedented scale with an unprecedented audience. Get on the Bus, for several reasons, … Continue reading →

In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon addresses the appearance of blackness in black men and what it means to validate your black, male appearance. In lieu with that the idea that seeing black males, evoked memories of violence and following, feelings of fear in white people, I believe that there would have been an effort to […]

When I first watched Get on the Bus, I laughed out loud when I saw Isaiah Washington’s character. The laughter come from a place of being confused about his identity as a black gay republican and a vague memory of watching Grey’s Anatomy when I was in middle school. I found it interesting that in […]

This essay, by Bill Benzon, is one of the most sophisticated readings of Mo’Better Blues. I found it very resourceful for my final project. In this essay, he discusses; The Cultural Psychodynamics of Racism Discipline of Jazz: From Nature to Culture Destructiveness and Creativity: The Albatross of Romanticism The Blues in the Night Jazz as […]

TW: Sexual Assault The two aspects of School Daze that really rubbed me the wrong way were its handling of queer issues and its handling of sexual assault. In School Daze, Lee sought to portray HBCU life in all of its complexities. However, in doing so, I feel he used the issue of sexual violence and gay identity […]

As I mentioned in my last blog, I really wanted to do a film analysis of When the Levees Broke, but since I wasn’t sure how to go about it, I looked up some guidelines from a few websites. This film analysis website had the easiest step-by-step guideline, so I’ll be using it for my blog, but I’ll […]

I found Spike Lee’s 1996 film Get on the Bus to be an interesting, although not satisfying, look at Black American masculinity in its multitude of forms in the mid-1990s. One aspect of the movie that stuck out most for me was the depiction of queer (in this case, gay or MSM) identity. I was particularly […]